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Trust the power of the story

29 February 2008

By Shoo Rayner — children’s author and illustrator

Shoo Rayner is angry: he is fed up with hearing about ‘reluctant readers’ and literacy standards that fail to rise – and he has strong views about who and what is to blame. Read on and find out…

Not long before I wrote this article, another report had been published on the Literacy Strategy, telling us what we all knew in our hearts already: millions of pounds had done little to improve literacy standards.

Perhaps we should first define what Literacy is. Ask most people and they would say that Literacy is the ability to read and write. Seems obvious? Most people would think so. But Literacy has been spun into an entirely different and mysterious subject.

It has been taken over by what I call the Literatistas. I suspect they were all language students, and deconstructionists at that. Text to them is just a plaything to analyse and pull to pieces. Literacy has become a measurable subject that can be ticked right or wrong, so that targets can be set and achieved through the manipulation of results and argued over with Ministers on The Today Programme.

Dear me! Do I sound like a cynic?...

Isn’t this article supposed to be about reluctant readers? There weren’t reluctant readers before Literacy. It’s a new term that Literacy has had to invent. Let me spell out what it really means: Reluctant readers are boys. Shall I write that again, in bold capitals with three exclamation marks, as we are told not to do? BOYS!!!

What has Literacy got to offer them? Nothing. They would much rather be kicking a ball or killing something on a PlayStation®. That’s what little boys do. You are never going to change that nor turn them into little girls however many phonemes you throw at them.

Dear me! Am I angry? Actually, yes I am. How can children move up a key stage when they don’t have the tools to understand what is going on? If you can’t read, how can you follow any other subject? Apart from a few exceptional savants, even maths requires the ability to read.

Reading is the one and only core subject. Writing follows in its wake. Without it all other subjects are meaningless. Modern Literacy has nothing to do with reading. In the old days, we used to call it grammar. Yes, grammar is important, but what’s the point of grammar if you can’t read?

So how do we get these boys – sorry, I mean reluctant readers – to read?

Trust the power of the story…

The government does. Every time it spins another line, it is using the power of the story. Every year the business world spends trillions on advertising, using the power of the story. The structures of all religions are built on the power of the story.

Ask those boys about phonemes and they will stare at you blankly. Ask them what happened on Coronation Street last night or in last night’s episode of The Simpsons and there will be no stopping them.

Everyone, reluctant readers included, listens to stories. It is in the genetic code. Every sale, every soul saved, every vote cast are all a consequence of someone telling a brilliant story.

Give these boys stories. Let them see that stories come from words in books and eventually they will want to know how the trick is done. Reading – real, practical literacy – is not about the analysis of text, it is about the joy of stories that can make you laugh or cry. It is about the ability to find out stuff for oneself and to get into and understand the minds of other human beings.

Of course I’m not saying we should lay off the synthetic phonics or any other fashionable system, but the power of the story should be at the heart of learning to read. Why else would any child bother? The TV and the PlayStation® provide all the lessons they need through powerful storytelling.

So we come to my real bugbear…

Which stories? The list of taboos that reading scheme writers are given gets longer every year. It started out with cultural and religious sensibilities – that was the end of The Three Little Pigs. But now boy’s subjects are being censored. No ghosts, no pirates, no war, no guns, no hint of danger or violence, no witches or wizards… the list goes on.

What must these boys think when they enter school and are given sanitised, girly books? Where are the armed forces in reading scheme stories? Where are danger and rough justice? Let’s bring some reality and excitement to their reading.

Outside school they have Harry Potter, James Bond, Alex Rider, Chucky, Doom, Resident Evil. That’s what captures their imagination (yes, even five year-olds). What must they make of the stories they get at school?

At the moment I’m working on an early reader series about a Viking boy. After years of sleepwalking into to this creeping, anti-boy censorship I was happily sketching out the character without a toy sword. Then, for fun, I went on the BBC’s The One Show. It was a science strand about the difference between the male and female brain. I discovered that I was still a man – even after years of feminisation in the children’s book world. It was a revelation.*

I came back to the drawing board and realised that a Viking boy would always have had a toy sword at his side, as I did myself when I was a boy, as boys do to this day and always will. My publishers agonised over whether to allow this, finally letting me go with it, as it is historically correct.

I hope, when the books come out, the picture of Viking Vik, holding his wooden sword aloft in triumph on the covers, might inspire reluctant readers to pick up the books and have a go. My publishers are worried that the 99.9% of teachers and children’s librarians, who happen to be women, will not buy it because of the wooden sword on the cover, so the books may never get to the boys who would really enjoy them. But that would be censorship.

Stand up and say ‘No!’

I think all this anti-boy censorship is in the imagination of publishers and that given the choice, teachers and librarians will always buy good books that their charges will enjoy – girl or boy. It’s a chicken and egg thing – books for boys aren’t available like books for girls are – just look at the acres of pink in any bookshop.

So if you want to get those reluctant readers reading, build a proper library at the heart of the school, pack it with exciting books and stop counting exclamation marks.

Stand up and say ‘No!’ to the Literatistas! Turn the literacy lesson into story time!! Trust to the power of the story!!! Give them adventure!!!! Give them blood and guts!!!!! Give them stories for BOYS!!!!!!